1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a remote controlling commander which can transmit various commands to an apparatus to be controlled, such as a video tape recording and reproducing apparatus (VTR) and so forth. More specifically, the invention relates to a remote-controlling commander which can perform various control functions for the apparatus with a simplified control key arrangement.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, various electrical or electronic apparatus, such as a VTR and so forth, need to facilitate .[.and.]. .Iadd.an .Iaddend.increasing number of functions to be performed. For example, a modern VTR may facilitate not only video recording and reproducing functions, but also timer recording functions, a variable speed video reproducing function and so forth. In order to perform such a great number of operations, the apparatus requires relatively complicated key operations for the user.
On the other hand, in .[.the.]. recent years, remote-controlling commanders for remote controlling the apparatus, such as VTR, have become a popular convenience for the users. The remote-controlling commander has been required to facilitate the capability of controlling most of the functions that can be performed by the apparatus. Therefore, the arrangement of an operation-key on the remote-controlling commander becomes more and more complicated and is difficult for the users to accurately operate to obtain the desired function.
In order to simplify the key arrangement, there has been proposed in the European Patent First Publication 01 88 162 a VTR with a multi-function rotary dial device. The multi-function rotary dial device performs a timer setting operation, a channel selecting operation, a reproduction speed control operation, and so forth. This significantly simplifies the key arrangement of the operation key array on the VTR. Furthermore, such a multi-function rotary dial allows reproduction of a video image at various speeds such as in a still mode, at 1/2 speed, at double speed, and so forth.
The purpose of the invention is to simplify the operation key array on the remote-controlling commander by employing the multi-function rotary dial device and to increase the number of remotely controllable functions that can be performed by the commander.